Happy 5th birthday, Xbox 360!

[Twinkle]

Just Cause 2 were its DirectX 10 requirement made the PC sales being about 5% of the total.

Any proof?

Windows XP is still the most common used OS of the Windows family

According to the latest Steam stats http://store.steampowered.com/hwsurvey?platform=pc, W7 32/64 + Vista 32/64 (31.21+14.53+12.59+8.76=67.09) massively outnumber XP family (31.56+0.96=32.52).

It worked so well with Just Cause 2 ... and Halo 2 (that was DirectX 10 exclusive on PC) ...

LOL. Halo 2 had nothing to do with DX10. Simple dll hack and it worked just fine on XP.

JC2's DX10 exclusivity was a stupid marketing thing according to one dev

We have somewhat reluctantly maintained a DX9 path because our editor which runs the game engine uses DX9, and not everyone in the office has Vista/Win7 yet. We can build the game exe to use DX9 instead as well, which is something people still on XP have done from time to time when they need to run the PC version, but that means a number of features are dropped. Strictly speaking the DX9 version should run faster, because it's rendering less, but actually the DX10 path runs at about twice the framerate. Of course, the DX9 hasn't received as much optimization work, but I think it still says something about the performance advantage of the DX10 interface.

http://cerberus.fileburst.net/showthread.php?t=56581

what Crysis did is a commercial suicide

Sure, piracy has killed it. Nevermind that Crytek has 7 offices all around the world with about 600 employees which makes it one of the biggest independent developers.

 

[Gerrard]

Skyway can't tell the difference between primitive tessellation and displacement mapping, how surprising.

Crysis runs perfectly on a medium PC of 2010 at max settings churning out stable 60 FPS.

Ahaha oh fucking wow.

 

[MapMan]

Gerrard: Those are not 2010 mid level GPUs.
Skyway: Okay, this is a form of tesselation but in fact, it only works like a level of detail thats able to add more triangles than the modeler did. Simply make the model have more poly, nothing more. Check the wiki,there are reasons why it wasnt popular and why pretty much no one used it. The tesselation that is developed now a days is a whole different matter, not only because of what it is capable of but how easily it can be used. You dont have to modify the model, you just add new displacement maps and youre done. Developers decide what features we (players) get, not vice versa.

 

[Sceptic]

I find myself agreeing with most of what skyway is saying. Except for the tessellation bit because I don't know anything about the technical details.

Of course, the DX9 hasn't received as much optimization work, but I think it still says something about the performance advantage of the DX10 interface.

Am I the only one who finds this hilarious?

Ahaha oh fucking wow.

Bullshit. I ran Crysis at full settings 1680x1050 with 2xAA at a stable >30 FPS on a 4870. I'll take the little yellow number in my game over a Tom's Hardware chart any day.

 

[Gerrard]

Gerrard: Those are not 2010 mid level GPUs.

Two 5870s sure as fuck are not mid range.

Just for you.

In game quality mode Gamer

And 2xAA is not maximum settings.
Let me laugh even harder.

 

[MapMan]

keep in mind that this resolution is quite big and the bigger the resolution the harder it is to apply AA to it.

 

[Sceptic]

And 2xAA is not maximum settings.
Let me laugh even harder.

Are ye talkin' to me? because

quite clearly says "NO AA" at the top.

 

[Gerrard]

Skyway said "on maximum settings", the second test has 2xAA.

 

[fizzelopeguss]

blame developers, ms put out the better tools and api. They're just not using them like they should be.


it's a dumb argument anyway, if you buy a gpu today chances are it'll be a dx11 compatible product.

 

[Kz3r0]

Only Nintendo generated a lot of profit this gen, and they're most likely the first one to release new console, others? not so much, heck, Sony's still losing money.

You are forgetting the conservative policies of Nintendo, also, their console is mostly a gimmick for non-gamers, so why take the risk when you are still making a lot of money?

Lol no, there are also disinterested gamers, unless you believe the industry' spin and the gaming industry in general is fucked up, hurr 'hardcore' durr, herp 'casual' derp.

Let's look at the numbers:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_be ... ideo_games
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_be ... ideo_games
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_be ... sole_games

 

[Raapys]

Tesselation actually is a pretty big improvement though. It's just that it hasn't been used properly yet, which can likely be traced back to how games are mostly designed with console hardware in mind.

One of the advantages, for instance, is that you don't need to create separate levels of detail for models and such. Thus artists have less work to do on each model; they just have to create the original model and then scale the tesselation level according to distance. This should also make it easier to have those models look better at a distance. But of course, until the vast majority of users actually have hardware that supports it, they'll still be forced to do it the old way thus removing much of the benefits.

Still though, I don't really see what all the complaining is about. Any progress is good, I'd say. And few people are actually arguing that DX10/DX11 is *essential*, so I don't really see the problem.

 

[Wirdschowerdn]

It would make no sense whatsoever for MS and Sony to release a new console generation now, because CPU's basically haven't developed that far the last 5 years. What, wanna replace the 3-core 360 CPU with a QuadCore?
It starts getting interesting when Intel releases maybe 48-core CPU's, maybe then MS/Sony will start to design a new console.

As for Nintendo, it's been confirmed that they work on an new home console, but I doubt it will have more power than a PS3/360, because superior graphics power was never Nintendos aim.

 

[MetalCraze]

Skyway can't tell the difference between primitive tessellation and displacement mapping, how surprising.

Yeah ATi improved it over 9 years and called it differently. Holy shit!

Ahaha oh fucking wow

'2010'. Can't you read? And you post me a test that is mostly about vcards from 2008.

Two 5870s sure as fuck are not mid range.

But 6870/6850 are mid-range videocards. And lookie even at a high res with 2x AA they run at 40+ or higher which is great. Remove anti-aliasing and they will churn out no less than 50 even at extreme settings.

 

[Gerrard]

Watch out, you'll trip if you keep running backwards.

 

[Dire Roach]

It would make no sense whatsoever for MS and Sony to release a new console generation now, because CPU's basically haven't developed that far the last 5 years. What, wanna replace the 3-core 360 CPU with a QuadCore?

I can understand that the rate of development has slowed down in the past five years thanks to a weakened global economy, but has CPU technology ever really developed that much over other 5-year periods in the past? As I understand it, the basic technology behind microprocessors hasn't drastically changed in decades, only tweaked to be slightly more efficient and made to fit smaller forms.

Also, isn't part of the reason why the technology keeps moving on thanks to the traditional console upgrade cycle? If the best-selling mass produced devices don't need upgrades, then there's much less incentive for hardware makers to develop better machines.

 

[Raapys]

Also, isn't part of the reason why the technology keeps moving on thanks to the traditional console upgrade cycle? If the best-selling mass produced devices don't need upgrades, then there's much less incentive for hardware makers to develop better machines.

Not really. Much of the hardware for consoles has often been specialized hardware that doesn't necessarily have much to do with consumer PC technology, instead being designed for the sole purpose of playing games( unlike PC hardware). The Xbox360 for instance, uses a specialized IBM PowerPC CPU( server hardware), if I remember correctly. Those things wouldn't even run Windows, but for the few tasks they're made they're much faster than Intel's general usage CPUs.

On the other hand, Xbox360 uses an ATI graphics chip, while the Playstation 3 uses a joint Nvidia/Sony GPU. Still, despite no new consoles we've seen tons of progress with GPU power, so that's hardly a problem.

I do believe they could make consoles that are many times faster than the current ones though. The GPUs alone have multiplied in processing power since that time, and I'm sure IBM could come up with a CPU which was several times faster. There's also the problem with RAM limitations( both for regular operation and for the GPU) with current consoles.

 

[Destroid]

There have been some pretty significant developments in transistor technology - changes in the materials used have allowed them to continue to shrink those guys. Smaller transistors = cheaper, cooler CPU. I don't recall what the advantage of multiple cores on a single die over a bigger faster core is.

I'd also like to point out that Starseige: Tribes implemented dynamic tessellation in 1998 using a 'Quad Tree' algorithm. Some comp sci guy will know more about that than me, and what relationship if any it bares to the new hardware implementation, but I gleaned it from thisarticle. Tessellation is not a new technology, only the hardware acceleration.

 

[MapMan]

No, no, no god damn it! The "old" tessellation is not the same as we have today. The most basic tessellation works like reverse level of detail. Instead of reducing polygon count it increases. Thats it. Now a days, tessellation is combined with displacement mapping which gives results as you can see in the video I linked above.

About multiple cores: It's easier to pack two cores into one cpu (it's different from two cpus) than to make a cpu that's twice as fast as a single core. Not to mention that multiple cores allow for parallel proccessing on separate cores. Check out nvidias CUDA technology, they pack hundreds of cores into a single gpu.